"We've drawn blank," Murray remarked, as they ate some sandwiches behind a boulder.
"Yes," said Andrew. "If there is anything to be found out, I'd locate it farther east."
Murray looked at him keenly for a moment and then answered:
"On the whole, I agree with you. It's my business, however, to search where I am told."
They went downhill soon afterward, and the next day the _Rowan_ sailed west along the coast, carrying Dick, who had reluctantly consented to go with the others.
It was a fine afternoon when the train ran down from the granite wilds round Cairnsmuir into a broad green valley. Behind, the red heath, strewn with boulders and scarred by watercourses, rolled upward into gathering clouds; in front, yellow stubble fields and smooth meadows lay shining in the light, with a river flashing through their midst. Whitney, watching the scene from a window, thought the change was typical of southern Scotland, which he had found a land of contrasts.
They had left the _Rowan_ where the river mouth opened into a sheltered, hill-girt bay, and walked up a dale that was steeped in quiet pastoral beauty. It led them to a wind-swept tableland, in which lonely, ruffled lakes lay among the stones, and granite outcrops ribbed the desolate heath. There they had caught the train; and now it was running down to well-tilled levels, dotted with trim white houses and marked in the distance by the blue smoke of a town. Andrew had chosen the route to show Whitney the country, and he admitted that it had its charm.
The train slowed down as it approached a station, and when it stopped Dick jumped up.
"I may be able to get a paper here," he said, and leaped down on to the station platform, where shepherds with rough collies, cattle-dealers, and quarrymen stood waiting.
Dick vanished among the crowd; but a few moments later he returned hurriedly, without his paper.
"I nearly ran into old Mackellar!" he exclaimed with a chuckle. "But I dodged him!"
"Who is Mackellar?" Whitney asked. "One of your creditors?"
"Worse than that. One of my trustees. I thought I'd better not meet him; he might have felt embarrassed after what he said to me not long ago."
Alighting at the next station, they walked downhill to the narrow town beside the Cree, and here they arranged to be driven up the waterside to the shooting lodge where Whitney's mother was staying. After standing on the bridge a while they went to the little inn. It was now getting late in the afternoon, the hillside above the town shut out the light, and the room they entered was rather dim. Dick stopped just inside the door.